Coach-Couch MINI-FILM Brief

Coach-Couch Mini-Films

Aim: to create a series of two-minute films showing what our teachers do to ensure:

o   pupils make progress in their lessons

o   pupils know how they are making progress in lessons

o   pupils track / record / can articulate how they are making progress in lessons

What for?

Collectively, the films will be a CPD resource providing teachers with accessible, pedagogically-meaningful, creative and do-able ideas to be applied in the classroom.  The films will demonstrate our pro-active, positive approach to teaching and learning, our reflective practice and our drive to ensure that pupils in our lessons make excellent progress.

What do I do to take part?

1.      Simply name a lesson (before the end of Term 4 please) when you will be using one of the strategies discussed.  Tell KP when and where. 

2.      Organise camera and filmer with KP / AW / another colleague.

3.      Get footage of the following:

1.      15-30 seconds: teacher explaining what he / she wants to achieve and why, giving brief context about the subject, class, ability-range and learning objective.

2.      15-30 seconds: teacher in action, eliciting the strategy being used.

3.      15-30 seconds: pupils in action, engaged in the strategy

4.      15-30 seconds: pupil comments on how they know they made progress in the lesson

5.      15-30 seconds: teacher evaluates www and ebi

4. Please please please please please don’t gather hours and hours of footage (unless you want to edit it yourself into a 2 minute film!).   Stick to the guidelines above.  Each mini-film should be NO MORE THAN 2 MINUTES long to make it snappy and effective to share.
   
   
5. Deadline: Monday 26^th March, the last Monday of Term 4. 

Before then would be even better!

Remember, this is what we are focussing on:

·         How do I know pupils are making progress in my lessons?

·         How do my pupils know they are making progress in my lessons?

·         To know this, what strategies do I use and do I get pupils to use?

"IT'S GOOD TO TALK"

On the Christmas Coach-Couch:
7^th December 2012

Focus question: How can I ensure that ALL students are learning from class discussion?

Ideas:

-   Make the point and expected learning objective of the discussion explicit before starting it!

-   Set out a question or problem which the discussion seeks to answer.

-   Revisit this question at the end of the discussion and evaluate the extent to which the discussion was successful.

-   Give independent / paired planning time so that pupils prepare their initial thoughts before the discussion begins.

-   Provide prompt cards to each pupil to prompt their contribution, for example:

o   Give an opinion / “In my opinion ...”

o   Develop the point / “To add to x’s point, I’d suggest that ...”

o   Offer a counter-argument / “I disagree because ...”

o   Offer an alternative view / “You could also argue that ...”

o   Give an example / “For example, when ...”

-   Designate a quality-control-role to G&T students who could help steer discussion back to the point.

-   Designate note-taking role to the student(s) who let(s) everyone else do the work / talks a lot in discussion but is reluctant to record ideas.

-   Give all a framework in which to prepare for and record learning from discussion. Headings might include:

o   My initial thoughts / opinion.

o   Points raised which support my opinion.

o   Points raised which counter my opinion.

o   If I had more time, what questions would I like answered?

o   After the discussion, how has my understanding developed?

-   Pause during discussion to review and evaluate and allow pupils to record learning. Ensure that discussion is balanced with silent, independent reflection and application of learning.

-   Use contribution cards: each pupil has a certain number of tokens or cards to “spend” in the discussion.

-   For small-group discussion tasks, plan “home” and “away” groups:

o   “HOME” groups are friends, people with whom they frequently interact

o   “AWAY” groups are differentiated: either grouped by ability or mixed-ability, depending on the task.

-   Pupils move out of small group discussion into whole-class discussion with a particular role to play or point to make; this has been agreed by the small group in advance.

-   Plan a plenary which requires all students to demonstrate learning and progress made as a result of discussion. For example, pupils record on a post-it / scrap-paper the following and hand it in as a passport to leave the lesson one (or more of the following):

o   a main point raised

o   something learned that they didn’t know before

o   an alternative view or new idea generated

o   a question they still want to ask

Coach-Couch gains momentum! Session 3 ...

Had you been "on the coach-couch" this week, you'd have explored these two questions:

1. How can I consolidate the learning of pupils in my KS3 lessons effectively?

and

2. How can I develop pupils' abilities in reading and selecting the appropriate information from an article (or any text) at KS4 and KS5?
Here are some ideas and solutions we discussed ...

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1. How can I consolidate the learning of pupils in my KS3 lessons effectively?

- use a shocking real-life fact as a plenary; pupils are asked to make the link between new knowledge or skills and this fact

- use mini-whiteboards / post-its in plenary on which every pupil indicates her learning

- link the learning objective to the plenary

- make the learning objective a question or problem to be solved by the end of the lesson

- use "how confident are you that you can x,y,z?" as self-assessment at the start and end of the lesson so pupils develop their own awareness of their progress.

- do a quiz as a plenary

- use this quiz as a starter in the next lesson to see if pupils have retained learning

- use a series of quizzes over a series of lessons with an overall winner (team or individual) at the end of the term or unit.

- punctuate a double lesson with a series of mini-plenaries so that students consolidate learning and understand their progress in a more explicit and scaffolded way

- use KWL to top and tail the lessons (AW)

K (Know):	Students list everything they think they know about the topic of study.
W (Want to know):	Students tell what they want to know about the topic.
L (Learned):	After students have finished reading or studying a topic, they list what they have learned. They can also check the W column to see which questions were answered and which were left unanswered. Then they should revisit the K column to see if they had any misconceptions.

- use KH's three boxes idea ...
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COMING SOON: a bank of resources shared by Coach-Couchers including a list of STARTERS and PLENARIES adaptable to all subjects and key stages ...

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2. How can I develop pupils' abilities in reading and selecting the appropriate information from an article (or any text) at KS4 and KS5?

- when introducing a reading or text-based activity, distinguish between using reading skills and developing subject-specific-knowledge; teach rather than (accidentally) test reading skills.

- make reading skills explicit ... and make the interdisciplinary transferability of these skills explicit.

- ask students to pick out the topic sentences in the text and, using these produce a summary of the text.
- based on the title or topic sentence, ask students to predict what the text / rest of the paragraph will cover.
- based on the title or topic sentence, ask students to write questions which they hope will be answered in the text / paragraph.

- during reading, students put signals in the margin, eg: a tick by something they agree with, a cross by something they disagree with, an exclamation mark by something that surprises them, a question mark next to something that puzzles or confuses them.

- direct the reading and distinguish between reading for content and reading for expression and language (depending on the skills you want to build).  eg. ask students to underline in one colour three new or useful ideas or bits of information and to underline in another colour three different expressions or phrases which would be helpful to them when writing their own (case study / essay / report).

- based on the content of the text, give students a series of statements and ask them to decide which statements correlate most accurately to the text.

- give students a non-related-text which follows the same format as the text to demystify the format or layout.

- cut up the text and ask students to work out how it would logically fit together and explain how they worked this out.

THANKS to Mary, Keira, Tom,Vishal, Peter, Alistair, Anna and Robin for your very positive contributions.  Remember we said we would each implement one new strategy in our teaching and post our experiences here ... 

3 Little Pigs...and 4 Big Assessment Objectives

Following on from our last Coach/ouch session and discussions we've had as a department following some recent observations, we decided to try and make it easier for our Year 12 students to access higher marks by teaching them more explicitly about assessment objectives. This is something we have done in the past but have changed the way we do it slightly this year so that they can understand the concepts in a non-subject specific manner.

In A-Level Economics there are 4 different assessment objectives:

• A01 - knowledge and understanding
• A02 - application
• A03 - analysis
• A04 - evaluation

In order for our students to access the top grades they need to be able to hit all of these assessment objectives confidently. We made them apply these skills to the '3 Little Pigs' story getting them to write questions which would directly test each assessment objective. I think this activity has really helped the majority of them grasp how each assessment objective works and now gives us a common language to use in all lessons when looking at any question in class e.g. "What A0 would this question relate to? Can anyone give me an A03 question about opportunity costs?"

A01- how many pigs were in the story?
A02 - Identify and explain two factors of production that the 3 little pigs used to build their houses
A03 - Explain why the wolf was unable to blow the 3rd little pig's house down.
A04 - To what extent were the tactics used by the wolf effective in capturing the 3 little pigs?

By having this common understanding about how they are assessed, I'm hoping this will help us to in our quest to provide some support at the bottom whilst still offering some stretch at the top.

If you want to know more about how we actually used it in the lesson or want to see some of the resources, just send me an email.

Better still, come along to the next Coach/ouch session and share some of your best practice.

On the Coach / Couch Two: KS5 differentiation

Following our discussion of the issues presented by mixed-ability KS5 teaching, here is a list of ideas suggested by the coaching-couching group.  We focussed on how to make class-discussion a genuinely useful learning activity. 

- ask yourself why you are planning to use discussion: is this for your own assessment purposes? To gauge understanding? To direct students towards a particular view? Is discussion the best way to achieve this purpose? What is the LEARNING that will come out of the discussion?  How will this aid progress?

- give students an effective framework in which to organise their notes during class discussion, using headings (eg. skills / questions / content / technical terms). ALSO see AW re. Cornell "creative note-taking".

- arrange the seating plan and table layout so that it is more conducive to discussion

- make the point of the discussion EXPLICIT so that students understand its validity; base it on a specific question or problem to solve. 

-  make explicit the expected register of discussion-based-learning.

- (related to the idea above) sequence the learning from (eg) "informal pair discussion" to "formal whole-group discussion" to "formal essay-writing".   Think of kinds of "talk" as a continuum leading to the required outcome.

- look up the SOCRATIC METHOD of talk to inspire learning*. One example of this is when you divide the class in two: the observers and the participants. The participants are given a problem to solve through discussion; the observer observe, using heading to structure what they are looking for.  Following the discussion, the observers give feedback to the participants.

- give students specific tasks to complete in the course of the discussion, eg: "write down two ideas you agree with, two you disagree with and one which you are unsure about".

- in advance of the discussion, give pairs specific responsibility for eliciting certain things out of the discussion and ....

- ... in advance of the discussion, create "experts" in the classroom - or groups of experts - whose role it will be inform others in the subsequent discussion.

- have high expectations of behaviour and participation: discussion-based activities are not optional!


*Interesting links to experiences of teaching using the Socratic Method:
"Teaching by Asking Instead of Telling" http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html
"The Socratic Approach to Character Education" and "Planning a Socratic lesson" http://www.goodcharacter.com/Socratic_method.html

Just wanted to say...

I'm mega looking forward to the next one. The last one was excellent and it was really good to be able to let off steam about things but more importantly come up with some practical ideas that might help us out. I've been trying out a few that we came up with and it's definitely having a positive effect even if it hasn't quite solved the problem yet. Small steps, but in the right direction!

Before

After (sort of)


See you all Wedensday!